How Bad Could Irma Be for Miami?

Hurricane Irma is coming and it’s going to be a beast. That much we know. But there’s still plenty about the massive storm that is unclear, including its path, when it will make landfill and how the areas likely to be hardest hit will respond.

Right now, Irma is expected to reach South Florida as a category 4 storm, meaning it will bring sustained winds of at least 130 mph. By some, estimates, the winds could be swirling as fast as 150 mph by the time Irma makes landfall, putting it among the strongest hurricanes to ever hit Florida. There is even some indication that Irma may be speeding up, with the possibility that it regains category 5 status.

But it’s not just that wind that Floridians have to worry about. There’s also the deadly storm surge, coastal flooding, and in some cases, increased potential for tornadoes. And no area is under more threat than Miami and its suburbs, home to 4.5 million people.

On Friday morning, the National Weather Service put out four maps of South Florida showing the severity of Irma’s different threats. Miami and the surrounding areas are the only place where wind, storm surge, flooding, and tornado threats are all at their highest levels.

The good news is that Miami might be the city most well equipped to handle a storm of Irma’s strength. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew, the last category 5 storm to hit the U.S., destroyed 125,000 homes in the area and caused $26 billion in damages. The storm largely missed downtown Miami, but laid waste to the city of Homestead, which sits southwest of the larger city. In the aftermath of Andrew, South Florida remade itself to ensure that a similar storm would not cause comparable devastation.

Building codes in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties require homes to be able to withstand winds of 130 mph. Hurricane-ready windows and roofs are now far more common than they once were and mobile homes fastened to stronger foundations are less likely to be tossed into air.

These preparations make Miami more ready than any other city for the aggressive winds Irma is promising, but there are still plenty of questions. The ability of Miami’s many high-rises to deal with the winds is a particular mystery. In the past 15 years, more than 40,000 condos in high-rises have gone up east of I-95, putting them well within the Irma evacuation zone. Since they went up after Andrew, these buildings were built with some of the country’s most stringent regulations, which require them to withstand winds of 175 mph. That doesn’t mean there won’t be damage though. Hurricane Wilma, which blew through in 2005 as a category 2 storm, blew out an untold number of windows in Miami buildings constructed after Andrew.

Then there is the issue of flying debris and unstable structures, such as cranes. There are around 25 currently perched above Miami, a symbol of the city’s construction boom. These cranes are made to withstand winds of 145 mph, but Irma is poised to brings winds stronger than that.

The surges are created when the high wind of a hurricane forces ocean waters onshore. The highest waves are typically centered on the leading right side of the storm, where counterclockwise winds in the Northern Hemisphere push the bulk of a hurricane’s destructive force. The surge waves are made even higher when they travel across shallow coastal waters, said Robert Bohlin, a meteorologist with the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu.

Miami is fortunate that its coastal waters are not as shallow as those on Florida’s Gulf of Mexico side, and the depth should reduce the size of the storm surge. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expects the storm surge to hit Miami to be around nine feet, significantly smaller than the record-high 28-foot storm surge that hit New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

But even a nine-foot surge could wreak havoc on Miami’s high-rises, which are likely to take a sustained pounding from waves. “Downtown office buildings there are not designed for surge,” Robert Bea of the University of California’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management told the WSJ.

With the storm surge also comes the threat of flooding. Much of South Florida is at or below sea level, and with and endless array of rivers, lakes and canals, it’s not just the coast that’s at risk for flooding. “If extreme force is pressed upon the ocean it will snake its way inland however it can,” Jamie Rhome, storm surge expert at the National Hurricane Center, told the Miami Herald.

If there’s a bright side to any of this, it’s that Irma is not expected to bring a catastrophic amount of rainfall, unlike Hurricane Harvey, which stationed itself over Houston and refused to leave. Forecasters are calling for eight to 10 inches of rain and officials are confident that aging infrastructure, such as the Herbert Hoover Dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee, will be able to handle the water.

At this point, with Irma bearing down on South Florida, the only thing left to do is to get people out of its path and to begin preparing for the disaster that will follow. Florida governor Rick Scott is already soliciting donations.

After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, uses an unofficial online messaging service for official White House business, including with foreign contacts, his lawyer told the House Oversight Committee late last year.

The lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said he was not aware if Mr. Kushner had communicated classified information on the service, WhatsApp, and said that because he took screenshots of the communications and sent them to his official White House account or the National Security Council, his client was not in violation of federal records laws.

In a letter disclosing the information, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee said that he was investigating possible violations of the Presidential Records Act by members of the Trump administration, including Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump. He accused the White House of stonewalling his committee on information it had requested for months.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on Thursday urged President Donald Trump to stop disparaging the late Sen. John McCain, calling the Vietnam war hero “a dear friend” and defending him against the president’s criticisms. …

Ernst’s remarks came during a town hall meeting at a high school in Adel, Iowa, where several attendees voiced anger about Trump’s attacks about McCain. One attendee described McCain as a “genuine war hero” and called Trump’s comments about McCain “cowardly.”

“I do not appreciate his tweets,” Ernst said, when pressed by the attendee why she didn’t previously speak out more forcefully. “John McCain is a dear friend of mine. So, no I don’t agree with President Trump and he does need to stop.”

As we anticipate the end of Mueller, signs of a wind-down:-SCO prosecutors bringing family into the office for visits-Staff carrying out boxes-Manafort sentenced, top prosecutor leaving-office of 16 attys down to 10-DC US Atty stepping up in cases-grand jury not seen in 2mo

For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons.

Sometimes these optional features involve aesthetics or comfort, like premium seating, fancy lighting or extra bathrooms. But other features involve communication, navigation or safety systems, and are more fundamental to the plane’s operations.

Many airlines, especially low-cost carriers like Indonesia’s Lion Air, have opted not to buy them — and regulators don’t require them. Now, in the wake of the two deadly crashes involving the same jet model, Boeing will make one of those safety features standard as part of a fix to get the planes in the air again.

… Boeing’s optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another.

Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes, according to a person familiar with the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they have not been made public. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy.

Attorneys for New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and more than a dozen other defendants charged in a Florida prostitution sting filed a motion to stop the public release of surveillance videos and other evidence taken by police.

Attorneys filed the motion Wednesday in Palm Beach County court. The State of Florida does not agree with the request, according to the filing.

In the motion, the attorneys asked the court to grant a protective order to safeguard the confidentiality of the materials seized from the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, and “in particular the videos, until further order of the court.”

Two years in, White House aides are dismayed to discover the president likes lobbing pointless, nasty attacks at people like George Conway and John McCain

But the saga has left even White House aides accustomed to a president who bucks convention feeling uncomfortable. While the controversies may have pushed aside some bad news, they also trampled on Trump’s Wednesday visit to an army tank manufacturing plant in swing state Ohio.

“For the most part, most people internally don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole,” said one former senior White House official. A current senior White House official said White House aides are making an effort “not to discuss it in polite company.” Another current White House official bemoaned the tawdry distraction. “It does not appear to be a great use of our time to talk about George Conway or dead John McCain. … Why are we doing this?

When Mr. Trump was running for president, he promised to personally stop American companies from shutting down factories and moving plants abroad, warning that he would punish them with public backlash and higher taxes. Many companies scrambled to respond to his Twitter attacks, announcing jobs and investments in the United States — several of which never materialized.

But despite Mr. Trump’s efforts to compel companies to build and hire, they appear to be increasingly prioritizing their balance sheets over political backlash.

“I don’t think there’s as much fear,” said Gene Grabowski, who specializes in crisis communications for the public relations firm Kglobal. “At first it was a shock to the system, but now we’ve all adjusted. We take it in stride, and I think that’s what the business community is doing.”

There’s no specific stipulation that Milo must be heard, so it could be worse

President Trump is expected to issue an executive order Thursday directing federal agencies to tie research and education grants made to colleges and universities to more aggressive enforcement of the First Amendment, according to a draft of the order viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The order instructs agencies including the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Defense to ensure that public educational institutions comply with the First Amendment, and that private institutions live up to their own stated free-speech standards.

The order falls short of what some university officials feared would be more sweeping or specific measures; it doesn’t prescribe any specific penalty that would result in schools losing research or other education grants as a result of specific policies.